Document 29.8 Edward Snowden, Interview, 2014

Document 29.8

Edward Snowden | Interview, 2014

The attacks on September 11 created the need for more reliable intelligence gathering. The latest advances in computer technology aided in this effort. However, as time passed, many critics worried that the government had exceeded the limits of legitimate constitutional bounds and posed a threat to individual freedom. Edward Snowden worked as an intelligence contractor for the National Security Administration (NSA). Following 9/11, the NSA was one of many government agencies conducting information on suspected terrorists. In 2013 Snowden leaked thousands of classified documents to the Guardian newspaper revealing the NSA’s worldwide secret surveillance program, including the gathering of bulk data on the telephone conversations of many Americans. In the following interview with the Guardian, Snowden explains his motivations.

We constantly hear the phrase “national security” but when the state begins . . . broadly intercepting the communications, seizing the communications by themselves, without any warrant, without any suspicion, without any judicial involvement, without any demonstration of probable cause, are they really protecting national security or are they protecting state security?

What I came to feel—and what I think more and more people have seen at least the potential for—is that a regime that is described as a national security agency has stopped representing the public interest and has instead begun to protect and promote state security interests. And the idea of western democracy as having state security bureaus, just that term, that phrase itself, “state security bureau,” is kind of chilling. . . .

Generally, it’s not the people at the working level you need to worry about. It’s the senior officials, it’s the policymakers who are shielded from accountability, who are shielded from oversight and who are allowed to make decisions that affect all of our lives without any public input, any public debate, or any electoral consequences because their decisions and the consequences of the decisions are never known.

Because of the advance of technology, storage becomes cheaper and cheaper year after year and when our ability to store data outpaces the expense of creating that data, we end up with things that are no longer held for short-term periods, they’re held for long-term periods and then they’re held for a longer term period. At the NSA for example, we store data for five years on individuals. And that’s before getting a waiver to extend that even further.

Source: Alan Rusbridger and Ewen MacAskill, “Edward Snowden Interview,” Guardian, July 18, 2014, mhttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/-sp-edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-interview-transcript, accessed December 14, 2015.